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Chapter 77 I Can't Change The Past
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DUBAI THE CITY OF DREAMS Chapter 78 There Is Only Eternity
Molten gold, impossible flame, and that maddening, glorious, drugging heat that was only and ever Aaliyah.Each thrust was better than the one before. Each gasp, each touch, a revelation.There was the fury, the rage. There was the hurt, the need.But beneath it was a deep kind of recognition.A truth he was not sure he could name.They tumbled this way and that. She rolled on top and stayed there for a while, riding him with abandon. Then he could take it no longer and flipped her again, coming over her once more. He took her hands and hauled them up over her head so she arched against him, and both of them sighed out the sweetness of it.All of it was sublime. None of it was enough.Maybe he had known all along, back then and in all the years in between that it never could be. That it never would be.That there was only this woman for him.No matter how he’d tried to pretend otherwise.No matter how he’d failed to forget her.Omar Farouq levered himself down, getting his face as clo
DUBAI THE CITY OF DREAMS Chapter 79 Roller Coaster of Emotions
Especially when she found her aunt sitting on a swing in the rose garden, watching Omar Farouq and Troy kick a soccer ball back and forth on the royal lawn.Her heart squeezed so tight she had to stop walking and fight to breathe. Aaliyah had to remind herself—sternly—of the six hard years she’d struggled through.Almost entirely alone.She found she had to do that a little too much as the days wore on.“Maybe it’s not all bad,” said Corrine on one of their walks through the extensive palace gardens.Back home in Tahoe: They had often tried to put in a bit of a summer garden in what summer there was so high up in the mountains. Unkillable geraniums seemed to be the height of their gardening prowess.It felt a bit like a metaphor that even the gardens here were unutterably lush.“There are worse things, of course,” Aaliyah allowed, trying not to sound disgruntled.When, in fact, she felt disgruntled. She’d woken from strange, dark dreams to find Omar Farouq in the shower. He had bid he
DUBAI THE CITY OF DREAMS Chapter 80 Omar's Cousin Khalid
“We received the news from an emissary of your...of the King,” her father said after several moments inched by. He scowled at her. “He insisted that we come and support you.”“And, naturally, since a random king I doubt you’ve ever heard of insisted, you came at once.”“We heard of him when those rude journalists camped out on our doorstep,” her father barked at her. “The neighbors will never look at us the same way.”“The horror,” Aaliyah murmured, with a bit more sarcasm than befitted an almost-queen.“I see that the years haven’t softened you any, Aaliyah,” her mother said with a sigh that made it clear she considered herself the victim here. “That’s a shame.”Aaliyah let out a laugh. “I didn’t want to give Troy away. You wanted nothing to do with me unless I did. I’m not sure what softening would have done to make that scenario any better.”Her father made a low noise as if registering how concerning he found this conversation. But Aaliyah kept her focus on her mother.As ever, An
DUBAI THE CITY OF DREAMS Chapter 81 Tonight Is Different
She hadn’t even bothered to change out of the gown she’d worn to the party tonight. Her hair was as he’d rendered it personally, after several hours of tearing each other apart. It hung down to her shoulders and looked as if there had been hands in it.There had been. His, and they ached to get back to it.All this while she stood there, fully exposed. Anyone who happened by could see her, the future Queen of Sohar, wandering around in the dark for no good reason.He made as if to go to her, then stopped before he could. Maybe he shouldn’t reveal himself. She clearly couldn’t see where he’d got to. She was scowling, her hands finding her hips the way they often did when she was out of patience. Then she turned in circles, completely heedless of the fact that she was standing beneath the lantern and therefore in full view of anyone who might care to glance out a window.She was not exactly stealthy.The fact that he should stay hidden and make sure she failed to locate him was clear to
DUBAI THE CITY OF DREAMS Chapter 82 Hidden Feelings
Every night, they came together and followed the fire that had always been between them, wherever it led. In the aftermath, they would lie together, with their breath coming fast and hard. And it would nearly burst out of him, the need to confide in her.The way it always had.“You can tell me,” she said quietly, watching him far too closely. “Whatever it is.”And there was something in her voice then that made him pause. He barked out a laugh. “Do you think it’s a woman?”She didn’t reply to that, which was a reply in itself, and he raked his hands over his face. He could not quite bring himself to laugh again. “You credit me with far more stamina than any man could have. Or do you not imagine that the demands we make on each other are more than enough for one person in one day?”“I have always thought so,” she replied, and he could see her eyes flash, there in the dark. Omar Farouq did not miss the emphasis on the word always.“I was in my bedchamber when you returned that day,” he
DUBAI THE CITY OF DREAMS Chapter 83 This Is About Justice
“I’m not suggesting otherwise.” She moved closer, there in his arms, to press her fingertips on his chest. “They sound like truly wonderful people. I’m sorrier than you know that I never got the chance to meet them. That Troy never will. But that’s not my point. I spent a lot of time these last year’s thinking about the many ways I could get revenge on my parents for turning their backs on me when I needed them the most. Sometimes it was all I thought about. And do you know what I finally understood tonight?”“I do not want—”“Revenge is a poison, Omar Farouq. It mires you in your worst moments while time marches on without you. It chains you to darkness. I know this. I lived this. And all the while I made up revenge scenarios in my head, my son—our son—was growing up. They tried to make me give him up. And I still spent far too much time in my head, which means I might as well have let them take him.” She let out a soft breath. “Tonight made it all too clear. They don’t have any powe
DUBAI THE CITY OF DREAMS Chapter 84 He Needed An Heir
AALIYAH has stayed on that beach for a long time.And when, at last, she turned and started back up the path, she hardly knew how she managed to put one foot in front of the other.She didn’t understand how she was here again. How had she given this same man her heart again only to have him smash it once more?She wandered without paying any attention to where she was going until it occurred to her that everything she’d said to Omar Farouq was true for her, too.Sohar seemed at times a fairy-tale kind of place, but it was all too real. Omar Farouq’s parents had been murdered, for God’s sake. It was just as dangerous for a future queen—or an ex-future queen, to be precise—to wander like this as it was for a king.Or anyway, it was putting an unnecessary target on her back.Aaliyah found it helpful to have something to concentrate on. To figure out where she was, which was easy enough in a place she hardly knew because all she needed to do was look up to see the palace standing there at
DUBAI THE CITY OF DREAMS Chapter 85 The King Needs A Queen
Aaliyah didn’t need to be urged out of the SUV when it drove her off the ferry that Angelique had commandeered, then brought her to that little parking area halfway up the lonely mountain. She thanked the driver, then charged up the narrow path cut into the side of the mountain as if she had something to prove.Because she did.And it was probably wiser to get as much of her jagged, furious energy out before she reached the Hermitage.Only because she didn’t think that it would serve anyone if she went in there after him, guns blazing.She already knew where that would lead. And she needed this to be different. She had to find some way to make this different from what had come before.Once she got to the Hermitage’s gates, she worried that it was entirely possible Omar Farouq might have locked her out. If he’d had the slightest suspicion that she would come up here after him.But when she reached the door, a simple push opened it up, and she found herself in that stone court once more
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